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pa007
08-09-2007, 00:39
Hello,

I am writing, to ask your opinions. My last post on these forums (a good while back) was not too well received and I realise now that I was perhaps heavy handed and looked a little too much like an advertiser. I guess that would have been a fair interpretation looking back on it now.

I write with a similar theme, this time I would ask a question. The web has developed in the past few years, a huge amount and there are endless social sites on one description or another. My question is do you think that there is place for a diving specific social site. I don't mean forum, like this, there are plenty of forums about, there is little need for another. I mean a place where people can make a profile, search for other divers, arrange trips, meet new dive buddies, post reviews of equipment, training programs and dive sites. A place where new divers can come and get some great info, not from a single author but from a community of divers with varying degrees of experience and differing circumstances.

My last attempt died a death because it was naive and foolish. I didn't plan things properly, that is not a mistake I wish to make again. I dive but I also develop for the web. I hope to bring the sort of state-of-the-art user experiences to the diving community that are usually reserved for entertainment sites and technology based sites.

One point you may raise is that there are sites that help divers find buddies, there are info sites, there are forums. And I agree there are. My reply to that would be that they aren't all in the same place, which isn't a problem but someone new, or someone less web-savvy doesn't want to be traipsing all over the web to find some info, or to meet like-minded people. And secondly, I don't think any of them are particularly easy to use (forums being the exception--most are relatively simple and virtually all work in the same way). My plan is to try to make sure that you spend as little time fighting technology as possible and do the things that you want to do quicker and with less hassle.

By all mean read my last post and vilify me again, no doubt I deserve it, but I would sincerely like your opinion on this. Do you think it, if done properly and if it received the correct coverage, would be of any use to new and old divers alike?

Oh and to answer a question posed in reply to my last post, on launch there would no advertising on the site at all. That would only change if I could no longer afford the upkeep of the site and had exhausted all other alternatives.

Pete. :)

PeteM
08-09-2007, 07:31
Personally I don't see a market for it. It comes down to the old adage "to learn to dive some time you've got to get wet". So what do I mean by that?

Diving is a totally physical sport, it is not like (taking a topical subject) rugby where you can start off watching it then get involved. You have to get involved from day one, and effectively you have to get involved with other people (instructors at the least). Because of that the dynamic is very different. There is a need for initial contact, Google, the Yellow Pages, Adverts in swimming pools etc provide that. A social network would not help here as until you were involved you would not know about it.

Past that stage, you are already hooked in and have access to knowledge from instructors and buddies, which can direct you to sites like this and divernet; so once again there is limited scope for adding anything new.

You also need to remember that social sites are very heavy on their machine requirements, that is going to cost, which means you need revenue - which is notoriously difficult to come by in the diving industry.

Nigel Hewitt
08-09-2007, 07:54
The web has developed in the past few years, a huge amount and there are endless social sites on one description or another. My question is do you think that there is place for a diving specific social site. I don't mean forum, like this, there are plenty of forums about, there is little need for another. I mean a place where people can make a profile, search for other divers, arrange trips, meet new dive buddies, post reviews of equipment, training programs and dive sites. A place where new divers can come and get some great info, not from a single author but from a community of divers with varying degrees of experience and differing circumstances.Basically no.

These things don't work because static text systems never do.
If you want a buddy it is for Thursday and if somebody else wants Thursday too you can cut a deal. Forums, with their immediacy do that well. These social networking things rise and fall and die the death. People work socially only with real people but behind a profile we are hidden while in conversation, even be it via a keyboard, you can discover I'm a grouchy old opinionated know-it-all with a rebreather.

Look at the number of 'post your profile' sites that have come and gone. The latest is Facebook but will it still be here in three years, probably, will it be significant once it ceases to be flavour of the month? Probably not. Do you remember Orkut (or what ever it was called, I can't even remember that) or the many that went before it. The concept appeals to people, they can display their best side to the camera, but once they have done that it is useless. The whole problem is that it is static. Even updates don't make it move they are just tinkering with the details. The world already has too many web pages with no content without inviting people to generate more.

If you want to make a fortune on the web think of a new idea. Run it while it's trendy then sell up and get out. This one's been done to death and it's been done to death for divers already. I know this as I've been refusing to bother to list one or two a month on the UKRS web pages for years.

Adrian Kelland
08-09-2007, 08:24
...you can discover I'm a grouchy old opinionated know-it-all with a rebreather...
While in real life he's a not so grouchy opinionated know-it-all with a rebreather. :)


It's up to you if you want to give it a go. In the end I have no idea what makes a site a big sucess. If I did, I would be paying people to run mine.

Adrian

Gerbil
08-09-2007, 09:04
The sucess of social sites is that they provide a useful meduim/venue for the exchange of communcation that didnt exist and that at the same time creates the conent. With Facebook, and Friends Reunited before it, the attartion was aslo nostalgia and what happened to factor. It is not based around a central theme. Flickr on the other hand is a social site based around one theme (photography) but this is becuase that media is well suited to the web. The success of flikr though is becuase it is not only limited to photography.

Having diving as a central organising theme, IMHO, won't work. Divers are a social subset and will use meta social sites instead as belive it or not divers are not just divers. A diving social site is by definition too limited.

The thing with social sites is you create a space for people to do what they want regardless of is they dive, fish, look at pictures of naked fat people and the people will do the rest.

tom00_uk
08-09-2007, 16:30
there are sites that all ready do this like the groups on face book

Matt-75
09-09-2007, 09:06
Try anything once.

If you think you can develop your idea, try it. The cost is minimal nowadays for an inet venture. If it flops, close it down and use the space for something else.

I have thought of several online diving themes i could develop online, but so many similar sites exist that i would be fighting all of them (which is pointless, since i frequent most of them myself).

But what do you have to lose. If you are already a developer, you probably have a large amount of space online ready to use, so use it.

:)